As part of the Guam Preservation Trust’s vision and mission to make historic preservation a community responsibility, we have collaborated with the Richard and Julia Moe Family Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Guam Department of Education CHamoru Studies and Special Projects Division to create the first ever Ekungok i Estoriå-ta (Listen to Our Stories) project.

As all historic sites have the treasured stories behind them, the goal of this project is to bridge CHamoru culture and historic sites place based learning to be taught in the CHamoru language as a means to perpetuate the native language of Guam and the Marianas. As the CHamoru language was said to be primarily passed down orally, to add an innovative way to transmit the story, it was thought that this may be the method of teaching the site and reinforcing the lessons by teaching the site using songs in the CHamoru language.

To meet these goals and objectives, the inaugural group of teachers received training in history methods during the Summer of 2019 which exposed them to conduct original research on their respective site. These teachers then created a narrative, aligned the subject matter into CHamoru language curriculum standards and created lesson plans and sample activities for in-class and at the site. The musical talent found within the staff of the Guam Preservation Trust used the narratives written by the CHamoru language teachers and original songs and melodies were created and then returned to the CHamoru language teachers to further teach the language to their students.

Finally, the initial core group of CHamoru language teachers will be then tasked to teach the remaining CHamoru language teachers using digital tools created by the project including DVDs, video, and on-line resources. Indeed, the goal to have many future student and teacher generations to teach about Guam’s historic sites using the CHamoru language and to have them transmit that knowledge to the entire community.